Cognitive Dissonance
by etakkate
Summary: What on earth was going on in that incredible head of Dr Temperance Brennan and why did her Knight not fight? Yet another post 100th episode - my first fanfic - please go easy : Spoilers for up to 5x18


She's gifted at math and music.

A pure logic mind, a marvel to witness.

To her everything is black and white, no grey.

An amazing problem solver.

An amazing person.

I marvel at her intelligence.

Obsessive with facts, she will research and research for weeks a single point or question.

She runs rings around specialists in their fields as she absorbs the facts and spews them out.

Its breath taking.

Socially my sweet and lovely person is out to sea.

Incapable of reading others emotions.

When everybody is laughing at the dinner table, she sits there stony faced not knowing what's going on.

Twisting her fingers and sitting stiffly, eyes darting all over the room.

She's incapable of understanding metaphor.

She's wonderfully creative but incapable of creative writing.

I've learnt to talk in direct speech.

A rolling stone gathers no moss is a rolling stone that gathers no moss - to her it's a factual statement.

I've learnt not to expect her to point out beauty, even though she must see it all around.

I've learnt not to be upset when I hug her and she stands there unresponsive and stiff.

I've learnt to accept her eccentric behaviours.

I've learnt that within her lies a hyper-sensitive person who can be destroyed by another's careless words.

She organizes and makes endless lists to keep her day under control.

She is incapable of spontaneous actions, if it's not on her today's to do list it cannot be done today.

We have been together for many years, we have a daughter and I love her very much. Aspergers is but a label, she is far, far more than a label.

**An anonymous posting on an Aspergers forum of a man with a gifted wife**

**Booths POV, Tag for Season 5. Episode 18, The Predator in the Pool, reflecting on the events of Season 5, Episode 16. At the Founding Fathers:**

He knows why she is the way she is.

He knows why she reacted the way she did.

It doesn't make it any easier though.

He knew it was a possibility, in fact, really, if he were honest with himself, he knew it was a certainty. He had planned for it.

Allowing himself to expect otherwise was pointless.

It sounds pessimistic, though, quite the contrary, Booth could see the full picture and his plan, although doubted at almost every step of the way - was, nonetheless, set neatly out before him.

It was just that first step, like plunging into ice water - he knew it would hurt.

Poetically, it was a leap of faith.

Logically, it was a gamble.

In the balance, Booth reasoned, he would call it both but neither.

To call it solely a leap of faith, would be to imply that he assumed to know her actions before the fact.

If there's one thing he knew about his partner – there's absolutely no predictability in her actions.

To simply call it a _gamble_ would be to devalue her worth, suggesting he was ok with all of her or none of her.

No, his Bones was _not_ a gamble.

He was _not_ ok with all or nothing.

Nothing was _not_ an option.

It bit him hard to see the confusion; the conflict of emotions; the flaw in her otherwise perfect logic.

For a moment, he wondered if he really _did_ know her after all but... he knew.

It pained him to defy all natural urges to comfort her, to fight for her, to _beg_ her. He went against every reflex and inclination in his body when he admitted she was right.

She wasn't right.

There's no way in hell she was right.

But that's ok.

Well, it hurt, but, for _Bones _– it was ok...

_...just_.

He knew that the better the prize – the harder the fight.

He _knew_ – right from the beginning.

With the first hurdle cleared, his confession hung thick between them.

At first it was uncomfortable.

But, eventually, ironically, it's a comfort.

It's the thrill of a shared secret.

He relaxes, he doesn't have to hide it anymore and it reverberates between them like a presence that can't be ignored.

The elephant in the room has finally been acknowledged.

It is only a matter of time before she realises she can't breathe without its company.

He's watching her now, her stunning face that, at one time, shielded her feelings with warrior resolve is slowly but surely crumbling.

Whether it's the sheer volume behind the dam or just the realisation that the dam isn't really necessary – either way, it's consoling.

it's progress.

The alcohol had warmed him, or maybe it's the realisation.

She's jealous.

He knew she would have felt it, in his gut, he knew, but the evidence, the evidence is spectacular.

He's a patient man, Booth. Six years ago, he _knew_...

It's not long now till the dam breaks.

He will wait.

**Brennan's POV, Tag for Season 5, Episode 16, The Parts in the Sum of the Whole.**

She knows why she is the way she is.

She always knew she was different.

It doesn't take a genius to figure it out, though it takes more than genius to compensate for it, to chip away the barriers with foreknowledge and confidence of what lies beneath.

It took Booth.

She did not believe in soul mates, romantic love and such intangible, ethereal imaginings. Or, perhaps, she simply could not _comprehend _vague and indefinable concepts – concepts that require more than just physical proof but, faith.

Perhaps she was as capable of producing romantic perception as a diabetic is of producing insulin.

This is what she used to tell herself anyway.

_She is a scientist; Dr Temperance Brennan cannot change, though a genius, she is physically incapable of creating that chemical pathway in her brain responsible for entertaining the notion of love._

Perhaps, though never admitting to it, she did not _want_ to. At least she never wanted to six years ago. She was never so much as even _curious_ to the philosophy and psychology of love, much less interested.

It was apostate to truth – to identifiable, black and white, indisputable _truth_.

The confidence she placed in her _knowledge_, in her process of cognitive deduction, was so strong, she never so much as wondered what colour the grass was on the other side. _Of what benefit to her was the knowledge of the colour of grass anyway? Green is green and the intensity of light and shade is simply a matter of perception._

Regardless, her processes and her understanding were reliable.

It was safe.

It never let her down.

And then... the first brick in her wall of tangible truths was shot to oblivion.

She became envious.

She _wanted_ to know what it felt like. She _wanted_ to know what it was that made him so very different to her. But, not just different...

..._attractive_. Curiously, intriguingly, _immensely_ attractive.

She wanted a taste of the apple. _Though, not cooked... she doesn't like her fruit cooked._

So, it seemed Temperance Brennan was equivocally changing. It precipitated so fast that it took her completely unawares.

Under the stealth of friendship, he continued to dismantle and disband; shaking the very foundations of her resolve and lighting kindling of doubt wherever there was once solid, dependable truth.

**_Though awareness brings solidarity, when her solidarity was compromised by awareness, it altogether floored her._**

It blurred her well laid out path of existence so that it became all but invisible.

He had, however, opened her eyes to a realm of possibility that was so frightening yet so colourful that _she didn't know whether to love or hate him for it. _

Though a genius and capable of expediency in rational thought, she was reeling in a quagmire of impalpable possibilities. It was like trying to perceive the existence of breeze having never left the confines of an empty, windowless room.

She just had to _trust_ it existed from the word of a person on the outside. Though that would have implied faith.

Then again, perhaps it could have been justified without the use of the term _faith_.

_Perhaps_ if she could validate the _reliability_ of the source of the information, the person whose word challenges her hypothesis, then, _conceivably, _truth could be _indirectly_ seen on the basis of _direct_ observation of the source.

She trusts Booth.

It's not _faith _baby; it's a catalogue of his past actions to form a solid basis for conclusion.

Her conclusion, her solid, factual conclusion was and is that Booth can be trusted.

**_Cognitive dissonance:_**

She _believed_ love was without substance, without proof – misconstrued from a series of chemical reactions existing simply to ensure the survival of our species. Logically to her, it could be reduced factually to simple science. The fictitious notion that it surrounds with enchantment, '_magic'_ and the parasympathetic involvement of cardiac muscle was utterly preposterous.

Yet, her evident trust in Booth and her consequent thoughts and actions completely belied her supposition.

It was an inward, silent battle as opposed as the battle between good and evil.

She was slowly beginning to feel normal for the first time in her life. She was holding a torch to the idea of hope.

In layman's terms... though she fought hard against it...

...Temperance Brennan was falling in love.

Her eventual _personal_ _experience_ of Booth's ethereal world was what really took the wind out of her. _Not literally of course...it didn't __actually__ take the wind out of her – that's quite improbable. No, in a metaphorical sense, it stunned her per se._

He caught her so off guard that her response was a reflex action – electrical pulses fired down innate overgrown pathways like strong pressure splitting open old scars.

He had never _changed_ her, she reasoned, he had just given her _awareness_, taught her to see things from a different perspective. Yes, it enriched her life, but it never _changed_ her. In essence, Temperance Brennan was still the Scientist; the Aspergian; the Empiricist.

The woman who _could not_ change.

And just as the sting of an old scar being forced apart, so was the sting of realisation.

**TBC? Yes? no?**


End file.
